To be born Russian, to remain Russian
And save this happiness,
When and wherever to wander–
Such as grandfathers ,to lay down in earth.
Nikolai Yevseyev

пятница, 8 мая 2009 г.

Mystery voice encourages treasure hunters to submit bounty

Fellow treasure hunters in Russia’s Kaluga Region claim they were subjected to superhuman influences after discovering a buried church treasure when a voice prevented them from selling items belonging to the church.

Growing up near the Ugra River – where the famous confrontation between the Russian army and Tataro-Mongol horde took place in 1480 – Vyacheslav Agapov and Konstantin Chiliskin became obsessed with finding ancient coins and other items.

At a friend’s invitation they visited the Velino village, where the wealthy Shirinsky-Shikhmatov estate once stood. There in a ravine, behind a nearby church, they had some luck. Just a few feet underground, Vyacheslav and Konstantin found a pot containing a collection of holy vessels decorated with precious stones.

Despite the note “Property of Velino church” engraved on the pot, the friend called a local dealer, who immediately offered $20,000 for the items without even seeing them.

However, a divine, or at least superhuman intervention, prevented the treasure hunters from conducting the transaction at the last minute, reports Komsomolskaya Pravda. The friend also began hearing a voice calling him and he said he felt like he was being patted on the shoulder, though no one was nearby.

The friend immediately left Velino, leaving Vyacheslav and Konstantin to choose to do what they like with the treasure. They were reluctant to sell the items and eventually returned them to the church.

1 комментарий:

I used to own a metal detector to look for archaeological artifacts, but its been years since I have done so. Oddly enough just a few days ago, I was walking down a hillside behind my apartment, and tripped over something that was sticking out of the ground. There had been some extremely heavy rains in the few days before this, and it had exposed something. It turned out to have been a part of the site of an encampment during the American Civil war and the rains had washed off enough of the side of the hill to expose an old iron tent stake.

There was a recent story on the BBC about Americans returning a small piece of the Collisseum in Rome, which they had taken from the site twenty years ago. They returned it with an apology that said they had gotten guilty every time they looked at it on their shelves, and so returned it.